Bri recently had a chance to go to Skrunda-1, an abandoned Soviet military city from the cold war, with the DCM, the ODC commander, and some of his fellow officers.  He took some fun photos, and I asked him to write it up:  

Beginning in the 1960s through the early 1990s, the Soviets installed and maintained an early warning radar installation in Latvia called Skrunda-1.  A contingent of Soviet military personnel and their families were stationed in Skrunda and a secret/closed town was built to house them all.  The Russians refused to abandon/clear out fromSkrunda for a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Latvia's 1991 declaration of Independence, but finally pulled out by the end of 1998, dismantling and then abandoning the radar installation and the purpose-built town that had housed the officers and their families.  When the deputy chief of mission and the Office of Defense Cooperation commander offered to give some of the embassy officers a tour of the facility, I jumped at the chance.  We were met at the entrance gates by our Latvian military colleagues, who guided us through the tour. 

Skrunda is a ghost town – a place where generations lived and raised families and worked during the cold war.  But the place was so suddenly abandoned it looks like Chernobyl: you feel the sense of disrupted living, of a sudden crisis, in the empty residential buildings and military facilities.  It was a sobering look and taste of life on the other side of the cold war.     

A Soviet military memorial.

The officers' club, complete with local artists' military scenes  and a large crumbling mural of Lenin.

The old movie/performance hall.

Entering one of the dozen or so large residential buildings.  In the apartments were still discarded clothes, jars, etc.  The facilities have been stripped of most of the light fixtures and plumbing, but the rest of the residences were in tact (albeit dilapidated and crumbling).  

This was the highlight for me.  In one of the side rooms in an officer's quarters, I found a wall where old posters of western rockstars were taped up on the wall.  I love the thought of cold war warriors manning early warning nuclear radar installations by day and secretly worshipping Freddie Mercury and Queen and western culture when they got off work at night.  

The DCM with an old accordion he found.  

Inside the community's hospital.  

What's left of an old x-ray machine.

The grocery store ("trading house of Bent").

A small tree/vine growing out of this window casement blended in with the decay inside and the trees outside.

Ironically, начина́ется means "beginning/start."  This is in the gymnasium.

View through the glass-block windows in the sauna.  

Instructions on how to use the baths.

Inside the kitchen for a communal cafeteria.

Instructions for how to use the industrial ovens/pressure cooker.

There was a bird's nest inside of this fuse box.

Paintball fortifications on top of one of the buildings.  Skrunda has been essentially abandoned for years, and at one point it was used for paintball.  It seems a little insane to have paintballing going on in a place where you could easily fall through rotting floors and roofs and there is broken glass and sharp rebar everywhere.

Inside the community prison and yard.

Skrunda is a cold-war relic that is about to be repurposed to a Latvian/NATO urban warfare training and practice facility in a few months.  We were lucky to get a good look at this enigmatic place before it fundamentally changes.  It was interesting to imagine the life and living that occurred there and to note the passage of time and geopolitical changes that have entirely obscolesced and then repurposed this "company town" that was so integral to USSR's cold war defenses.  

After Skrunda, we headed to a nearby country estate that survived Soviet occupation (no doubt a highly prized location for well-heeled Soviets) that has been repurposed to a hotel and restaurant, and had lunch.  It was a surprising relief to leave Skrunda and its decay behind -- it's hard to overstate how destroyed the place was and how much glass and brick littered every nook and cranny.  Heading back out into Latvia's sprawling rural countryside felt like a breath of fresh air.  

I loved this -- I could have spent many hours reading in this nook.

Skrunda was a walk back in time and a fun and eye-opening trip.  Back at the embassy, it seemed even more surreal and out of time.  This type of look behind the curtains at history and the world is why I joined the foreign service -- I loved this trip.

January started like this.  A little snow that the kids had to literally gather into one sorry little pile where they made a snow brick fort using tupperware for molds.

And this was as good as the snowman got.  The scarf is bigger then the snowman.  ;)

Then by January 24th, we had this:

Bri got out with Rhea and helped her make a snowman with the new snow.  A much more impressive snowman since they actually had snow to work with.  :)

The snow fort is still there, but with more snow around it.

We gave Rhea singing lessons for Christmas.  This girl is constantly singing, and has been for years.  I have videos of her as a three year-old out in front of our house walking around on rocks, twirling on the driveway, etc. as she's singing.  It was about time that we help her fine tune her beautiful instrument.  Sometimes we have to tell her to go to her room to sing or shut the door of her bedroom as she's singing (because we get it all the time!), but we love it, and wouldn't have her any other way!

Here's a sample from her first lesson:

This is what Rhea has to say about her lessons:

"I have singing lessons on Tuesdays.  I really like my singing lessons because I learn a lot.  It is fun and maybe a little tiring, but I have gotten used to how it works and I've started to like it.  I've learned a lot of songs that helped me to go higher or lower with notes like "The Lost Boy," "Creation Sings the Father's Song, "The Cave," and now I'm going to learn a new song.

In my first few lessons, I was scared to sing in front of my teacher, Gundega, but she taught me how to overcome my fears and let out my freedom to sing.  I have learned to overcome my fears and to exercise my mouth when I am about to sing.  Gundega understands how I feel and if the song is too hard, she knows and loosens the song up.  She is nice and I like her."

This year has been an interesting year for Rhea as far as friendships go.  She's always had an easy time of making friends with her yellow, friendly personality.  But here at ISL, we're finding that it's hard to break into circles of friendships that are already established.  We thought it would be better  here in Latvia since we started school on time (in Angola we came 2 months after school started), but alas, Rhea has had a year of "personal growth" as our other kids have had in 4th grade as well.

The first 3 weeks or so of school were going well.  Rhea had met another 4th grade girl from the embassy and they hit it off right away.  There were 2 other girls at school that they played with as well.  But another new girl was trying to break into the different social circles, and instead of just joining in and being happy, she became jealous of Rhea's friendship with Celeste, the first friend she made.  Sadly she started pulling the other girls away from Rhea.  It led them to exclude her, make fun of her, talk about her (in front of her even), run away from her on the playground, not let her sit next to them at lunch, etc., basically bullying her.  What was harder was that they were 4 girls, and there were only 3 other girls in the one 4th grade class.  So after a few months of Rhea trying different things to reach out to these girls (we had daily conversations, strategies, prayers and of course tears!), we counseled her to move on to the other few girls in her class.  So she did.  And after being "let in" to their circle of friendship, all seemed to be going well with Gundega and Sandra.  Until Christmas break.  Gundega started to show signs of jealousy.  Luckily they had a few weeks off for the holidays, but even after they got back, the issues started right back up.  Gundega hated when Rhea played with Sandra because Gundega and Sandra had been friends the previous year and she was feeling threatened, even if they were all playing together.  Emotional and physical bullying ensued on the part of Gundega toward Rhea, and one of the physical assaults ended with Gundega breaking her wrist after hitting Rhea in the head!  Rhea was quiet about her pain, so no teachers knew until Gundega asked to go to the nurse because her hand hurt.  The nurse asked how she hurt her hand, and she explained that she had hit someone.  And sure enough, the next day, Gundega returned to school with a cast on her arm.  Rhea has inherited the P family head of steel!  After the incident, there were moments of hot and cold between the girls, but on this particular day when I was subbing at the school, they were having a "good day" so I was able to get a picture of them together and capture Gundega's cast.  ;) 

As happens at this age, the good day came to an end, and after Gundega got her cast off, there were two other physical assaults of head butting and throwing a ball at the back of Rhea's head in P.E., so Bri and I finally requested a meeting with the principal.  Gundega had never been called in to talk to the principal, even after the teacher reported that she hit Rhea, so we were curious as to how he was going to handle future issues, because they didn't seem to be coming to an end.  Suspension of course is the next course of action if it happens again, and his "plan" is to keep the girls separated.  We'll see how long that lasts.  ;)

We went to our neighboring city of Jurmala to take Savannah to an indoor water park for a birthday party one Saturday, and as we were pulling in, we noticed this man across the street.  I stopped the car and took a picture to capture the moment.  He was on his deck with outstretched arms trying to get Vitamin D from the little bit of sun that was popping through the clouds! 

And when I say "little bit of sun," that's what I mean!  This is all that was there, but this man was taking advantage of the opening in the clouds and stood there for at least the 5 minutes we watched him.  He was in his own world too.  He didn't bother to look around or take his eyes off of that sunlight.  He was focused as he soaked up the light.  I thought maybe he would break out into an operatic song, but he never did. ;)  This scene made me happy because there was someone here in Latvia craving sunlight as much as me.

We had literally weeks and a few months of almost only gray sky where I was literally feeling closed in by what seemed like smothering clouds.  If I was claustrophobic, I think I would have a problem here!  Finally in January I started feeling less and less happy or enthusiastic about anything, and borrowed a few "happy lights" (that's what I call them) from the embassy, and started feeling back to normal after a few weeks of using them (of course I was taking Vitamin D too).  I keep the lights here on the side table in the family room to turn on whenever I'm sitting and can feel the weather affecting me.  I don't know how they work, but they work!

 As we were waiting for Savannah to go into the birthday party, we noticed these men walking in front of us all dressed up in ice fishing gear, carrying their equipment.  They get to enjoy ice fishing for the next few months since the rivers have finally frozen over.  How anyone can sit and fish in this cold, humid weather is beyond me!

After dropping Thomas off at a paintball birthday party in Riga, we happened upon the most amazing park!  We parked and let the girls play for a while before heading home to hook up with Rhea's friend for a playdate.  Apparently the money for the park was donated by a famous Latvian basketball player.  This was the perfect place to brighten up our cold January winter day!

Large playground equipment:

 In ground trampolines.

 Sliding and spinning equipment:

 And a huge bike-skate park:

 Permanent ping pong tables and nets even!

 It was seriously cold.  These are the photos we took before Bri's iphone froze to death (we brought it back to life after a few hours in front of a warm fire).  The girls ran around for an hour while Bri went outside the park and got a few pictures.  After an hour, my fingers and toes had had enough.  ;)  But we definitely know how we're going to be spending many hours this summer!

An amazing full scale mural on Tallinas iela.  It's a picture of a rising sun and forest behind a long-bearded man with a sword and two traditionally dressed Latvian women holding an instrument and water pitcher.  They're wrapped in the traditional woven belt with intricate patterns and pagan symbols.  We see this pattern everywhere, especially on belts, scarves, bookmarks, and home decor.

We had to celebrate with some Rice Krispy treats sprinkled in butterscotch chips!  Thomas stuck to his goal for 2017 of reading the Book of Mormon every day, and he did it!  And he ended up finishing the book on December 31st before he went to bed, so we celebrated on January 1st.  Bri and I are so proud of him!  Every night before bed, no matter how tired he felt or what else was going on around him, he sat and read his Book of Mormon.  It's been fun all year to have him share with us what he's read.  He has a goal for 2018 of memorizing a scripture every week along with keeping up his goal of reading every day, and so far he's doing well!  He's a great kid, internally motivated to do his best spiritually and academically.  He's got a good, compassionate heart that is trying to make his Heavenly Father happy.  We love him and feel lucky to be his parents!